Law Enforcement

n November 28 - An officer was dispatched to an apartment in Colby in reference to the smell of marijuana coming from the apartment. The officer arrived and met with the owner of the apartment building and the maintenance worker at the apartment. The owner said the apartment has the window open and he walked near the window but did not want to walk right up to the window.

The officer walked into the building and could smell marijuana. The officer followed the smell and traced it to an apartment inside. The officer was told who lived in that apartment and was told that the woman who lived there should be home as her vehicle was in the parking lot.

The officer knocked on the door several times and no one answered. The owner tried calling the tenant and it went to voicemail. After five minutes, the officer started to walk away and the woman opened the door and came into the hallway, shutting the door behind her.

The officer explained to the woman why he was there and asked if she smokes marijuana. The woman said she only smokes cigarettes. The officer asked if he could step inside her apartment to ensure the smell of marijuana wasn’t coming from her apartment. The woman said she would not allow the officer in her apartment but would open the door slightly so the officer could check from the hallway. The woman opened the door and the officer could only smell incense.

n November 28 - An officer met with a woman in reference to a theft complaint. The woman said she has two green “Slow Children” signs in her yard. The woman said that on November 19, a car drove past her house in the early hours of the morning and a person ran to her yard, grabbed one of the signs and ran away. The woman showed the officer the video of this she had from her security cameras. In the video, the officer could not recognize who the person was or the type of vehicle.

The woman said she had posted on Facebook that a sign was taken and asked for it to be returned. The sign has not been returned. The woman said her daughter had overheard kids at Colby schools talking about taking signs but does not know who the kids are. The woman was given a lack of consent form to fill out.

n November 28 - An officer was traveling in Abbotsford and observed a vehicle traveling in front of him with no tail lamps on. The officer conducted a traffic stop of the vehicle and met with the driver. The officer could see an open can of beer in the cup holder near the driver and also observed the driver to have glassy or watery eyes. The driver said he had drank three cans of beer and had three shots of tequila that night starting just over two hours before he quit. He said he was drinking alcohol at his residence in Abbotsford. The man agreed to perform standardized field sobriety tests at the police department as it was below freezing and the man had on only a t-shirt. The man was informed he was not under arrest but was transported to the police department to perform the tests.

After the field tests, the man declined to perform a preliminary breath test and was placed under arrest for operating while under the influence (first offense). The man was issued a citation for operating while under the influence, possession of open intoxicants in a motor vehicle-driver, operating without a valid license and was given a warning for defective tail lamps. The man was then released to a responsible party.

n November 29 - An officer took an illegal dumping/vandalism complaint from an Abbotsford man. The officer met with the man at a property in Abbotsford which was an abandoned structure used as storage. The man showed the officer two piles of random items that looked as if someone had emptied out their vehicle leaving the items in his lot. The man said that he had recently drug the parking lot and that the items must have been left around the night of November 25 or 26. The man showed the officer the southwest corner of the building which had a tire with a rim and a car battery on top of it that was also left behind. The man said he went into the building to check if anything appeared out of place or missing. The man did not see anything suspicious.

The officer looked through some of the items left behind and found three different papers with different individuals information on them. One was a vehicle registration, another unemployment paper and the last was a Green Bay municipal citation.

The officer had no information in-house on any of the individuals. The officer was unable to make phone contact with the two phone numbers that had been on the papers. The officer told the man he would let him know if/when the suspects were located.

n November 29 - An officer learned that probation had recently issued a warrant for a man who resided in the city of Abbotsford. The officer went to the address and made contact with the man’s wife who said he was not home but he would be home any minute. The woman denied the officer’s request to look inside the residence.

The officers left the residence to wait nearby for the man to show up. The officer observed a vehicle similar to the one the woman described pull in front of tåhe residence. The officer walked up to the vehicle and observed the man to be the one that the officers were looking for. The officer notified the man of his warrant and he was placed in handcuffs.

The man was transported to the Clark County jail .

n December 2 - An officer was dispatched to a business parking lot in Abbotsford for a fight that was in progress. The officer arrived and met with a woman who said she was walking in the parking lot while pushing a stroller that had her chairs in it. A truck started to back up slowly. The woman said she yelled at the driver to stop and hit the back of the truck with her hand and cane several times until the vehicle stopped.

The woman said a female got out of the passenger seat and approached the woman. The complainant said the woman who was in the truck started yelling at the complainant. The complainant said the woman pushed her in the shoulder and took the stroller and shoved it away. The complainant said that the driver stayed in the truck and was apologizing for not seeing the complainant. The complainant said the woman then calmed down, got in the truck and left. The complainant showed the officer a picture of the license plate that was taken.

The next day, the officer went to the residence of the owner of the vehicle and found the woman who had reportedly been involved in the incident the night before. The woman said she was expecting an officer to speak to her. The officer asked what had happened and the woman said she was in the passenger seat and her children were in the back. The woman said the man driving started to back out of the parking spot very slowly due to the number of people that were walking after the Christmas parade.

The woman said her kids were being loud in the back seat and once they heard someone yelling for them to stop they did. The woman said she thought they backed into someone and got out of the truck to check. The woman said the complainant started yelling at the man driving and was speaking down to him. She said the complainant had spoken down to him by accusing him of not having a driver’s license because he is Hispanic.

The woman said she was upset so she pushed the stroller out of the way and yelled at the complainant. The woman said as she turned to walk away, the complainant hit her in the back about three times. The woman said the punches did not hurt and were not that hard. The woman said they got in the truck and left. The woman denied hitting or pushing the complainant and said she only pushed the stroller out of the way as she could see there was not a child in it.

n December 3 - An officer was driving south on South Division Street. The officer observed a vehicle driving in front of the officer with what appeared to be several items hanging from the rear view mirror obstructing the driver’s view. The officer conducted a traffic stop and met with the driver.

The driver said she did not have insurance and the K9 officer arrived on-scene to perform a free-air sniff of the vehicle. K9 Dodge alerted to the vehicle and the officers had the driver step out of her vehicle. The officers searched the woman and nothing was found of evidentiary value. The officers then searched the vehicle and located a brown bag in the driver’s side door storage compartment. Inside of the bag, officers located a glass pipe. The woman said the pipe belonged to her and she was told that if the substance inside of the pipe tested positive for marijuana, she would be getting a citation for possession of drug paraphernalia.

The woman said she understood and the officer issued her a citation for operating a vehicle without insurance. The officer took the pipe back to the police department where the pipe tested positive for the presumptive identification of marijuana. The woman was mailed a citation for possession of drug paraphernalia.

n December 3 - An officer observed a vehicle traveling in Colby and the officer could see that the vehicle had a 2022 expiration sticker. The officer ran the registration through the squad computer and saw that the registration had been expired since December of 2022. The officer stopped the vehicle and met with the driver who gave the officer an ID card. The officer explained the reason for the stop to the driver and passenger. The passenger said the driver was taking the passenger to work in Curtiss. The officer asked why they were heading in the opposite direction of Curtiss and the passenger said they were just going home and asked if they could take the vehicle home.

The officer ran the driver through dispatch and was told that the driver has a revoked driver’s license due to an alcohol related offense. The officer completed citations for operating after revocation and expired registration. Another officer arrived at the traffic stop and explained the citations to the driver. The other officer then deployed K9 Dodge for a free air sniff of the vehicle. K9 Dodge alerted to the front passenger door where the passenger was sitting.

Both the driver and passenger exited the vehicle and were searched. Nothing was located on their persons. The passenger’s mother arrived and the passenger asked if he could take his backpack from the vehicle and sit in his mother’s vehicle. The officers told him he could sit in his mother’s vehicle but could not take the backpack. The passenger instead stayed standing in front of the officer’s squad car.

The officer searched the vehicle and in between the driver’s seat and the center console, the officer located a vape device. The liquid in the device was thick and syrupy which based on the officer’s training was consistent with THC. In the backpack which was on the front passenger side floor was a large box which had multiple vape devices in unopened packages. The passenger denied ever seeing the vape devices and said the backpack was not his. The driver also denied knowing of the box and the officer said he would explain to the driver’s probation agent what had happened if no one was willing to own up to owning the box. The driver said something to the passenger and the passenger said the box was his. The officer asked the passenger if the vape device found by the driver’s seat belonged to him and the passenger said it did not.

The officer called the on-call probation agent who said the driver needed to contact his probation agent the following day. The evidence was transported to the CAPD and tested positive for THC. The officer mailed a citation for possession of THC to the driver and referred a possession of THC charge for the passenger to the Clark County Juvenile Court.